The Long View

In an NY Times op-ed jeremiad about East Coast ignorance of the West Coast, Timothy Egan’s “Clueless in Costco” observes:

These are all minor annoyances, mind you, in a world with daily reminders that an embittered, small-hearted senator from Connecticut can hold up health care for millions, or some people would rather read a “book” by Hulk Hogan than a short story by Sherman Alexie.

The “small-hearted senator from Connecticut” is “independent” (he used to be a Democrat before he lost the Democratic primary [but won the general election] because of his single-minded support for Bush’s War in Iraq) Joe Lieberman.

Much speculation now concerning Lieberman’s flip-flopping on a public health care option, which he supported before he opposed it. The speculation is the subject of Gail Collins’s column in today’s Times, “Sorry, Senator Kerry.”

Collins observes:

I have decided to start a rumor that it all goes back to the 2004 presidential race, when Lieberman not only failed to win any primaries, but was also bitten by either a rabid muskrat or a vampire disguised as a moose. Other than that, my favorite explanation comes from Jonathan Chait of The New Republic, who theorized that Lieberman was able to go from Guy Who Wants to Expand Medicare to Guy Who Would Rather Kill Health Care Than Expand Medicare because he “isn’t actually all that smart.”

Perhaps, Collins suggests, it is a quality that I have observed in powerful men, the boundless capacity for holding a grudge. (Ask me some time about my encounter with former Virginia governor L. Douglas Wilder.) As Collins relates:

I used to cover Lieberman when he was the majority leader of the State Senate in Connecticut. We got along very well, except for one interview, during which he talked about working for J.F.K., and how he kept a Mass card from Robert Kennedy’s funeral to remind him of the principles to which he had dedicated his career. Showing me the card, he remarked casually that he hadn’t looked at it for some time. I wrote an article using the neglected Kennedy card as a metaphor for Lieberman’s fall from his old ideals into the pragmatic politics of a party leader. He was outraged and wounded, and I believe I apologized. Taking back the apology now.

No Lieber lost there.